Jazzmaster assassin Nels Cline might be as close as the modern avant-garde gets to a household name. Before joining indie rock institution Wilco in 2004, Cline divided his energy between improvised contexts alongside Julius Hemphill, Vinny Golia, and brother Alex, and more song-oriented settings like Carla Bozulich’s alt-country outfit Geraldine Fibbers and Mike Watt’s Crew of the Flying Saucer. Cline continues to occupy the narrow space between pure sound and song, as exemplified by his longstanding Singers trio with drummer Scott Amendola and bassist Trevor Dunn, and his recent duo with guitar prodigy Julian Lage.

In his own words, Michigan-bred, New York-based GERALD CLEAVER’s multifaceted approach to the drum set balances “static sound and extreme dynamics, melodicism within heavy texture, deep-rooted groove, unchained abandon, and the power and revelation of recurring form.” Cleaver made a name for himself through enduring partnerships with Vision Fest regulars like Roscoe Mitchell and Charles Gayle, but lately critics have been abuzz about his new musique concrète-cum-free rock quintet Black Host with Darius Jones, Cooper-Moore, Brandon Seabrook, and Pascal Niggenkemper. Pitchfork’s Hank Shteamer described 2013’s Life in the Sugar Candle Mines as, “a well-tended hot-house: feverish and bracingly weird, yet also purposeful and shrewdly strategic.”

LARRY OCHS is best known as a founder and executive director of the Rova Saxophone Quartet, a San Francisco institution that pioneered the application of improvisational strategies within the context of contemporary classical music in the late 70s. Equally inspired by modernist 20th century composition and the more worldly, abrasive strands of 60s free jazz, Rova and Ochs became widely celebrated for the lengths they would go to stretch the performance parameters of notated music through early collaborations with Henry Kaiser, Fred Frith, and John Zorn. This concert marks Ochs’ first Philadelphia appearance since the Celestial Septet, a big band encompassing both the Rova Sax Quartet and the Nels Cline Singers, performed at the International House in 2011.

The trio will perform at Gallery5 located at 200 West Marshall Street in Richmond, VA. on December 9th. Tickets will be available on our wesbite at gallery5arts.org and via this site on Friday, November 11th at 12PM. Doors will be 8 PM and the show will begin at 9 PM. Gallery5 is a 501 c3 NFP whose mission is to facilitate and inspire creativity in our region while operating a museum preserving and celebrating the history of Virginia’s oldest firehouse and Richmond’s oldest police station and jailhouse.